BLOOMINGTON – On the same day his athletic director described IU coach Archie Miller’s task as a “serious rebuild” at a board of trustees meeting, Miller himself engaged in a frank discussion with reporters about that challenge.

Fred Glass’ comments reportedly came during an extended discussion of the broader direction of Indiana’s football and men’s basketball programs. They were also surely prompted by the seven-game losing streak that has submarined Miller’s once-promising second season in charge in Bloomington.

Michigan State is favored to extend that streak to eight on Saturday, when the Hoosiers visit East Lansing with ESPN GameDay in town and the Spartans aiming for a second-straight Big Ten title.

Miller, meanwhile, continues to grapple with a short-handed, unbalanced roster. One that’s lost both its ability to accentuate its strengths, and the depth and versatility it was expected to lean on during the season’s more difficult months.

Archie Miller's second season started out brightly, but burned out quickly.(Photo: Bobby Goddin/for IndyStar)

“This team played really hard early in the season, and like it or not, our depth has been challenged in a lot of different ways,” Miller said. “In the Big Ten you're going to need a lot of bodies. You're going to need some experience to go along with it, and we're in a stretch in the first month of the Big Ten play, in terms of January, where our depth and our chemistry and our team changed.

“That's not to say that we can't recreate ourselves here and start to do some things better.”

Miller’s news conference Friday centered around a direct discussion of the myriad challenges facing Indiana this season, the sources of those challenges and what the Hoosiers have and haven’t done in trying to meet them.

He acknowledged what IU has lost in the course of this season, both physically in terms of bodies and depth, and figuratively in terms of its ability to play to a central identity at both ends of the floor.

And it was perhaps Miller’s most introspective dialogue since the first days of his tenure regarding his long-term vision at Indiana, and balancing that with day-to-day progress.

“When you take over a program, you've got to look at the big picture,” he said, “and the big picture is (recruiting) classes upon classes upon classes and development upon development.”

Romeo Langford scored 20 against Rutgers, but had been in a bit of a slump.(Photo: Andy Lyons, Getty Images)

There are issues this roster is grappling with that are recent, like injury issues, attendant problems with depth and experience, and fleeting confidence.

And there are some that stretch back beyond Miller’s tenure.

The roster Miller inherited immediately lost three players to the NBA draft. It also included five seniors, and a pair of transfers within months of Miller’s hiring brought the total turnover in Miller’s first year on the job to 10 players.

It’s worth pointing out at least one outgoing player, former Crown Point standout Grant Gelon, later suggested he had not wanted to leave IU. But in the bigger picture, a sagging APR number limited how much non-graduation roster turnover Indiana could absorb without NCAA penalties, even if Miller underplayed it Friday.

“(IU’s APR number) hasn't really been a concern,” Miller said. “When we got here, we had a full roster of a team, know what I mean? There wasn't a whole lot of wiggle room in terms of what we were going to do in our first year, to be able to recreate something really fast.

“For us, development and retention is everything, and graduation is everything. Our goal is to put these guys in a situation where obviously they're getting better, they're getting older, and they're pursuing what they want to do academically. APR is something that I think every staff goes through when you have transfers or departures, but for us that hasn't really been a concern.”

What Miller was left with this season was an inevitably young team. Nine of its 13 scholarship players are either freshmen or sophomores because of that wave of exits. And a team that as far back as September Miller said would need to be deep and versatile to succeed.

It has rarely been allowed to be either, because of injuries. Indiana overcame that to win 12 of its first 14 games, but the Hoosiers haven’t won since Jan. 3, and they haven’t often looked good in losing.

Archie Miller is looking for ways to get IU out of its current seven-game funk.(Photo: Bobby Goddin/For IndyStar)

There were back-to-back 15-point losses to Nebraska and Purdue. The capitulation at home against Michigan. And Wednesday’s trip to Rutgers, which started with promise but came undone during a 22-0 Rutgers run across 9 ½ minutes either side of halftime.

“There's got to be certain things that you're taking great pride in right now,” Miller said. “Really narrowing the focus, it's not a lot of things, it's a couple things, and we've got to do those things well.”

He started Friday with a defense that dug Indiana out of a lot of holes in tight wins in nonconference play but has been porous and inconsistent since the new year. He’s also trying to reenergize that offense, which has endured more scoreless streaks than just the one that sunk the Hoosiers midweek in New Jersey.

And there’s a broader, more intangible concern that blankets everything Indiana is doing right now.

“We have to have more poise,” Miller said. “We have shown the ability to sort of play well at times and then all of the sudden, it goes away very fast, and we can't stop the flood, so to speak. And that comes down to poise and patience, and don't panic on either end of the floor. Just stick with it, stay with it, and be a little smarter.”

Is that possible, with a roster still in transition, a locker room asking a lot out of its youngest members and an injury crisis that doesn’t seem to be improving?

“We're trying to correct some things,” Miller said, “but at the same time trying to reestablish that, No. 1, there's a lot of season left, and No. 2, we've got to get better in a couple areas that we can control pretty quick.”

Just about every time Miller has fielded a question this season about his long-term vision, he’s batted it away, suggesting he is firmly focused on the here and now. Friday, prompted at least in part by Glass’ exchange at the trustees meeting in Columbus, proved an exception.

Nevertheless, no matter how much Miller zoomed out, he always came back around to what’s in front of him right now — a team with flaws, challenges and 10 games to turn things around.

“This season is long from over. We'll see obviously at the end of the season how far we can go, and then it goes into the next one and the next one and the next one,” Miller said. “We've had good moments this season where we've shown really good progress, and like all teams, you go through sort of the waves.

“We're in a wave right now, and hopefully as we continue to keep progressing here, and you get to February, you want to start to play your best ball, and we have an opportunity to do that.”